I think I’ve finally settled on a word for this part of my Journey:
Inner Formlessnesses, Outer Balance

Whilst I adore Goddess Kali and Lord Shiva, and so many other Beings from other pantheons — The idea of an Ultimate Masculine, or an Ultimate Feminine doesn’t quite appeal anymore.

What if there’s more to Spiritual Essences or flows of Energy than this whole Masculine-Feminine thing?

Just a thought experiment: If we had three or four different sex chromosomes (and not just X or Y) … would we then have Masculine, Feminine, and two other types of energies? And each had biological differences that translated into different functions (historically and statistically speaking), and each of those functions became reified over time….. In that case, we would have 3 or 4, rather than 2 different ‘types of energy’.

In other words, if we had more sexes in our species, would we have more Divine Archetypes?

Based on the way humanity is configured right now – yeah – totally.

Personally, I feel the Divine is a lot larger than the way certain aspects of our sex/reproductive/biological genders are configured. (Of course culture and history have a lot to do with solidifying those differences).

We’ve seen an evolution in the way we relate to the Divine based on the Tribe (1st chakra), then on Sexual Differences (2nd chakra), then on who conquered whom (3rd chakra – power). And historically speaking, that does make a whole lot of sense.

We saw philosophical approaches to the spiritual that stressed Unity Consciousness (7th chakra and above), that stressed the Rational, Scientific Approach to Spirit (6th chakra) in principles of the Vedas, Saiva Siddhantha and many so-called ‘New Age’ Paradigms. We saw intermediate religious forms that replaced the feminine focus with a masculine deity, along with the rhetoric of shame and (in their eyes) justified suppression of the Yoni and her Teaching.

The more philosophical, and later patriarchal approaches, historically evolved in response to earlier understandings and resulted in the rejection of practices and belief systems that centered upon the Mother, the Priestess, The Serpent and the Earth. Sacred women became witches or whores. Serpents became the Devil And the Earth became Hell, a place of torment, and not the Source of life.

(And so many of us are working to reclaim these condemned traditions, bringing them back into the spiritual mainstream – Hooray!)

Another tangent of the more philosophical approach simply renounced all things material … or any concern in the ‘real-world’, adopting a position of – I’ll call it materialistic nihilism. (For those of us who believe we came as Spirit-in-Flesh for a reason, that doesn’t work either)

The rational, universalistic rhetoric of the later, more philosophical approaches were not borne out in practice as seen as the great departure between text and practice. One cannot claim to recognize to see the Divine in All and then deny a woman, a foreigner, a transvestite – anyone who does not fit the status quo equal rights, even in places of worship. They spoke of detachment, mind and non-judgment, but the institutions that carried that knowledge did not abide to those principles.

Now all this time I thought I was playing for the first team. Then I thought finding a middle space for both teams to shake hands was the task (4th – the Heart Bridge). Now, something in my brain is waking up to say – No love, you’re not even supposed to be playing the same game.

What that is, I’m still finding out.

But back to the discussion –

If I could compare the Divine to any part of the human Body, I’d compare it to the Brain and it’s infinite capacity for neural re-wiring and learning. Heck, the architecture of the brain mimicks the architecture of the Universe – not a coincidence I think.

Coming back to the male-female construct (which is the basis of duality) – What if thinking in these terms of constructs pretty much shuts out other types of energetic expressions? Things which we may have greater access to if were less bound by those constructs.

Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t to say that masculine and feminine do not exist – but perhaps they aren’t the whole picture. Perhaps we’re building a picture of Spirit based on two pieces of the jigsaw, when there may be a million other pieces.

Yeah, dualism doesn’t seem to work for me anymore. But the perspective of ‘it’s all one, it’s all interconnected’ is still missing a few explanatory pit stops, for me at least.

That doesn’t mean to say I don’t believe in the God or Goddess anymore. They do exist, but just in a different space than they used to in my growing relationship with the Universe.

[Again, this is my internal understanding – of how Spirit may be structured – I guess you could call it my evolving philosophical approach to understanding Spirit]

As these ideas wake up in my brain, I ask myself – how do they best translate into the outer world?

Do I stop valuing and honoring the priestess tradition? or the Goddess Path?

Absolutely not. That’s one of the greatest imbalances in the world. If the two pieces are going to reach out to the missing million, they’ve got to work together.

Do I stop seeking for balance?

No way! It’s just that my idea of balance and integration is no longer bound to a male/female form.

Do I stop being a priestess?

Only if I stop being a woman who serves the Divine. And that ain’t changing. Even this line of thought is part of that Path of Service.

So, what, in my external actions – does this line of thought change –

Not much, as far as I can see. The vibration of my words and actions might change, however. The reason why I’d seek balance would of course, be different.

But internally —- Man…. Woman… God.. Goddess… What a Trip writing this has been!

Priestess Bairavee Balasubramaniam, PhD
www.bairaveebalasubramaniam.com
Where the Divine is taking me, who Knows?